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"Heu! reliquias semiustas regis, denudatis ossibus,

Per terram sanie delibutas foede divexarier."

["Alas! that the half-burnt remains of the king, exposing his bones,

should be foully dragged along the ground besmeared with gore."

Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., i. 44.]

I happened to come by one day accidentally at Rome, just as they were upon

executing Catena, a notorious robber: he was strangled without any emotion of the

spectators, but when they came to cut him in quarters, the hangman gave not a blow

that the people did not follow with a doleful cry and exclamation, as if every one had

lent his sense of feeling to the miserable carcase. Those inhuman excesses ought to be

exercised upon the bark, and not upon the quick. Artaxerxes, in almost a like case,

moderated the severity of the ancient laws of Persia, ordaining that the nobility who

had committed a fault, instead of being whipped, as they were used to be, should be

stripped only and their clothes whipped for them; and that whereas they were wont to

tear off their hair, they should only take off their high-crowned tiara.'[Plutarch,

Notable Sayings of the Ancient King.]

The so devout Egyptians thought theysufficiently satisfied the divine justice by sacrificing hogs in effigy and representation;

a bold invention to pay God so essential a substance in picture only and in show.

I live in a time wherein we abound in incredible examples of this vice, through the

licence of our civil wars; and we see nothing in ancient histories more extreme than

what we have proof of every day, but I cannot, any the more, get used to it. I could

hardly persuade myself, before I saw it with my eyes, that there could be found souls

so cruel and fell, who, for the sole pleasure of murder, would commit it; would hack

and lop off the limbs of others; sharpen their wits to invent unusual torments and new

kinds of death, without hatred, without profit, and for no other end but only to enjoy

the pleasant spectacle of the gestures and motions, the lamentable groans and cries ofa man dying in anguish. For this is the utmost point to which cruelty can arrive:

"Ut homo hominem, non iratus, non timens,

tantum spectaturus, occidat."

["That a man should kill a man, not being angry, not in fear, only

for the sake of the spectacle."Seneca, Ep., 90.]

For my own part, I cannot without grief see so much as an innocent beast pursued

and killed that has no defence, and from which we have received no offence at all; and

that which frequently happens, that the stag we hunt, finding himself weak and out of

breath, and seeing no other remedy, surrenders himself to us who pursue him,

imploring mercy by his tears:"Questuque cruentus,

Atque imploranti similis,"

["Who, bleeding, by his tears seems to crave mercy."

AEnead, vii. 501.]

has ever been to me a very unpleasing sight; and I hardly ever take a beast alive that

I do not presently turn out again. Pythagoras bought them of fishermen and fowlers to

do the same:

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